Hardcore Henry Is a 90-Minute Cinematic Seizure

Global video game sales are expected to break $100 billion dollars in 2017, so it's not surprising that Hollywood, which did a mere $38 billion worldwide in 2015, is trying to figure out how to get in on that crazy money. The big American studios are investing massive budgets in adaptations of mega franchises (the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender has a $200 million budget), but Russian director Ilya Naishuller has gone the cheaper, dirtier, and a possibly more pure route of hijacking video games for the big screen with his new film Hardcore Henry. Naishuller shot an entire action movie in the visual style of gaming's most successful genre, the first-person shooter, with a $10 million budget and a GoPro mounted to the lead actor's face.

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Sitting through an entire 90-minute action movie with all the running and parkour and fights and jumping out of blimps from a first-person perspective sounds like something that would be really unpleasant to sit through, and it really is. The movie's basically one long action sequence, and any plot development that happens along the way goes down on the run, so the camera never stops moving. Adding to the visual trauma is a frenetic editing style that can make you feel like you're having some kind of seizure. I don't see how anyone could watch it and not experience motion sickness. One couple at our screening only made it 15 minutes in before fleeing, unsteadily, for the exit.

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I made it all the way through, but I definitely felt like I'd suffered from some sort of brain trauma when I walked out of the theater. (Can you get a concussion just from watching a movie?) But I also felt like it was worth it.

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In keeping with its video game roots, Hardcore Henry's plot is somehow both threadbare and overly convoluted. All you really need to know is that Henry's a mute, parkour-stunting cyborg bent on vengeance against the private army of a telekinetic psychopath. Or I might say "you are," since the whole point of the experience isn't to lead you through a remarkable storytelling experience but to put you in the shoes of a vengeful cyborg who knows how to do parkour.

Naishuller frequently plays the first-person viewpoint for laughs–as Henry, you not only dual-wield pistols and punch out bad guys. You also smoke a joint, perform amateur open-heart surgery, and touch a boob. But there are also a few action sequences in which the perspective transcends gimmickry and actually achieves the immersive sensation that Naishuller's going for—especially in a foot chase that involves crossing a bridge via its dizzyingly high-support structure, and a sequence where Henry scales the outside of a crumbling office building. (I take the lack of visible safety gear to mean they just weren't using any if YouTube videos starring Russian thrill-seekers have taught me anything.)

Hardcore Henry is strictly for people who appreciate sensory overload as a distinct type of entertainment. That's not everyone, but it's a growing number of people. Twitch, the most popular video game streaming platform, has over 100 million unique visitors every month, many of them tuning in to watch other people play the type of first-person shooters from which Henry found inspiration. Leaving the theater, I had the feeling that I had glimpsed one possible outcome for the future of cinema. Considering, at the same time, I was having difficulty getting out of the headspace of a rampaging homicidal cyborg? It was a genuinely scary thought.